G.K. Chesterton
Child Psychology and Nonsense

In this age of child-psychology nobody pays any attention to the actual
psychology of the child. All that seems to matter is the psychology of
the psychologist and the particular theory or train of thought that he
is maintaining against another psychologist. Most of the art and literature
now magnificently manufactured for children is not even honestly meant
to please children. The artist would hardly condescend to make a baby
laugh if nobody else laughed, or even listened. These things are not meant
to please the child. At best they are meant to please the child-lover.
At the worst they are experiments in scientific educational method. Beautiful,
wise, and witty lyrics like those of Stevenson's "Child's Garden
of Verses" will always remain as a pure lively fountain of pleasure
 for grown up people. But the point of many of them is not only
such that a child could not see it, it is such that a child ought not
to be allowed to see it

The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I'm sure,
Or else his dear papa is poor.

No child ought to understand the appalling abyss of that after-thought.
No child could understand, without being a snob or a social reformer or
something hideous, the irony of that illusion to the inequalities and
iniquities with which this wicked world has insulted the sacred dignity
of fatherhood. The child who could really smile at that line would be
capable of sitting down immediately to write a Gissing novel, and then
hanging himself on the nursery bed-post. But neither Stevenson or any
Stevensonian (and I will claim to be a good Stevensonian) ever really
dreamed of expecting a child to smile at the poem. It was the poet who
smiled at the child, which is quite a different thing, though possibly
quite as beautiful in its way. And that is the character of all this new
nursery literature. It has the legitimate and even honourable object of
educating the adult in the appreciation of babies. It is an excellent
thing to teach men and women to take pleasure in children, but it is a
totally different thing from giving children pleasure.

Now the old nursery rhymes were honestly directed to give children pleasure.
Many of them have genuine elements of poetry, but they are not primarily
meant to be poetry, because they are simply meant to be pleasure. In this
sense "Hey Diddle Diddle" is something much more than an idyll.
It is a masterpiece of psychology, a classic and perfect model of education.
The lilt and jingle of it is exactly the sort that a baby can feel to
be a tune and can turn into a dance. The imagery of it is exactly what
is wanted for the first movements of imagination when it experiments in
incongruity. For it is full of familiar objects in fantastic conjunction.
The child has seen a cow and he has seen the moon. But the notion of the
one jumping over the other is probably new to him and is, in the noblest
word, nonsensical. Cats and dogs and dishes and spoons are all his daily
companions and even his friends, but it gives him a sort of fresh surprise
and happiness to think of their going on such a singular holiday. He would
simply learn nothing at all from our attempts to find a fine shade of
humour in the political economy of the poor papa, even if the poor papa
were romantically occupied, not in jumping over the moon, but at least
in shooting it.

Of course there is much more than this in "Hey Diddle Diddle."
The cow jumping over the moon is not only a fancy very suitable to children,
it is a theme very worthy of poets. The lunar adventure may appear to
some a lunatic adventure, but it is one round which the imagination of
man has always revolved, especially the imagination of romantic figures
like Ariosto, and Cyrano de Bergerac. The notion that cattle might fly
has received sublime imaginative treatment. The winged bull not only walks,
as if shaking the earth, amid the ruins of Assyrian sculpture, but even
wheeled and flamed in heaven as the Apocalyptic symbol of St. Luke. That
which combines imaginations so instinctive and ancient, in a single fancy
so simple and so clear, is certainly not without the raw material of poetry.
And the general idea, which is that of a sort of cosmic Saturnalia or
season when anything may happen, is itself an idea that has haunted humanity
in a hundred forms, some of them exquisitely artistic forms.

It would be easy to justify a vast number of the other nursery rhymes,
in the same vein of a more serious art criticism. If I were asked to quote
four lines which sufficed to illustrate what has been called the imaginative
reason, when it rises almost to touch an unimaginative unreason (for that
point of contact is poetry), I should be content to quote four lines that
were in a picture book in my own nursery

The man in the wilderness asked of me,
How many strawberries grow in the sea?
I answered him, as I thought good:
"As many red herrings as grow in the wood."

Everything in that is poetical; from the dark unearthly figure of the
man of the desert, with his mysterious riddles, to the perfect blend of
logic and vision which makes beautiful pictures even in proving them impossible.
But this artistic quality, though present, is not primary; the primary
purpose is the amusement of children. And we are not amusing children;
we are amusing ourselves with children.

Our fathers added a touch of beauty to all practical things, so they
introduced fine fantastic figures and capering and dancing rhythms, which
might be admired even by grown men, into what they primarily and practically
designed to be enjoyed by children. But they did not always do this and
they never thought mainly of doing it. What they always did was to make
fun fitted for the young; and what they never did was turn it into irony
only intelligible to the old. A nursery rhyme was like a nursery table
or a nursery cupboard  a thing constructed for a particular human
purpose. They saw their aim clearly and they achieved it. They wrote utter
nonsense and took care to make it utterly nonsensical.

For there are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way
is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into
nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when
they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and
complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.